I’ve warned you guys. Weird things happen in gunfights. You should expect an Elbonian satellite to fall on your head, or a gopher the size of a grizzly to erupt from the ground at your feet. I’ve encouraged you to believe your eyes, shrug off bizarre twists, and stay focused on the threat. Some of you shared your own stories of bizarre “moments ’midst mayhem,” and a whole bunch of you asked for real-world examples. A few readers were even dubious about the possibility of such strange happenings happenin’. So, for you doubting Thomases, here are some examples from my private stock.
NUCLEAR .38 SPECIAL ROUNDS?
I was a rookie patrolman when my senior partner and I were called to back up a pair of robbery detectives. They planned to kick in a door at a felon-filled flophouse hotel, crunch some cockroaches and yank a sleepy stickup-shooting suspect outta his grimy sheets. His room was on the second floor of this converted century-old residence, and a rickety stairway led directly from his crib down to a garbage-littered lot. That’s where Davey and I were posted — just in case Plan A went South when the “dicks” kicked the front door. It did.
We weren’t quite “positioned” when multiple muffled gunshots preceded Hairball Harry’s rapid exit out onto the landing. There was a flash of light as the door banged hard against the rail, and both Davey and I thought it was a muzzle flash and gunshot. Davey was standing in front of me with his trusty 6″ S&W Model 10 aimed at Harry. He squeezed (or jerked) the trigger — and the stairway landing seemed to explode, with a hurricane of splinters and dust billowing out toward us as simultaneously, the entire stairway screeched, groaned, and collapsed to the deck.
I pushed past Davey when a second after that, a ground-floor back door flew open and two skivvie-clad bed-headed dudes with pistols in their mitts staggered outside, blinded by the clouds of dust, shouting stuff like “COPS! They’re usin’ grenades!” and searching for targets. Using some ungentlemanly language, I convinced ’em of the inferiority of their tactical situation. Good thing they didn’t fight — my partner was still standing there, frozen, with his revolver a hand’s-breadth from his nose, staring incredulously at the muzzle. He was lost in his own world, wondering how a lead 158 gr. SWC could blow up a stairway and two landings. Finally, I had to grab the gun and gently awaken him.
The gunshots were Hairball Harry’s response to his door gettin’ kicked. The dicks had sidestepped, and were occupied with straightening out a pair of pucker-factor-induced “wedgies.” That flash was the bulb of an outside light’s last gasp as its fuse blew out. The once-heavy wooden beams and planks of that stairway were virtually hollow shells filled with a century’s worth of termites and wood-powder. It simply imploded under Harry’s weight. He was unconscious, suffering multiple injuries, snoozin’ in the wreckage.
The Big Diff between me an’ Davey was that previous combat experience had taught me stuff blows up and weird things happen in gunfights, and you have to keep your head in the game.
ALLEYWAY ANTICS
A patrolman pal of mine had an armed dope dealer cornered in an inky-black blind alley. They were casually trading occasional shots, waitin’ for backup to arrive, when suddenly a huge supernova light came on, a door swung open, and the alley was instantly filled with laughing, leaping, twirling cheerleaders, complete with pompoms, ponytails, big bells on their shoes and those cute little kick-skirts. Dudes! Wanna talk weird here? The entire pep-an’-cheer outfit from a local college had just finished a late photo-session on a theatre stage. The best part? As the cheerleaders danced an’ advanced down the alley past my pal, the dope-dealer tried to sneak out with ’em!
“Unbelievable,” my buddy told me; “Here’s this dreadlocked dude wearing a Rastafarian cap and a filthy M-65 (field jacket), skipping along between cheerleaders, still holding a Beretta 92 in one hand. Skipping!” Rasta-man didn’t get away, and nobody got hurt, but my pal said it was an ugly scene. “The shrieking and screaming hurt my ears worse than the gunshots did,” he said. “Never jump out from behind a dumpster and point a pistol anywhere near a buncha cheerleaders.”
DON’T SHOOT WHITEY: HE’S MINE!
“Tommy D,” another badge-wearing brother, is well known for his morbid fear of dogs. They tend to bite him, fiercely and frequently. He had chased a biker bad guy into the back yard and the two were faced off pointing pistols at each other, when outta the shadows waddled an irritated overweight Welsh Corgi, who commenced chewing Tommy’s ankle.
Distracted but undaunted, Tommy and Biker Bill continued discussing whom oughtta throw down whose howitzer when suddenly, a little white Pit Bull pup ran between Biker Bill’s legs and skidded to a snarling stop in front of Tommy. That’s when I arrived — just in time to slap leather and watch in horror as T.D.’s eyes saucered and his shaking gun dropped to point at the Pit Bull!
I was a half-second short of blasting Biker Bill when he flung his gun to the grass and screamed, “Don’t shoot Whitey! He’s mine!” I’ll leave the detailed analysis to you guys. Just watch out for grizzly-gophers and Elbonian satellites, okay?
“‘Civil rights’ used to be about treating everyone the same. But today, some are so used to special treatment that equal treatment is considered ‘discrimination!’” ~ Thomas Sowell
Any who champions “diversity” needs to be asked how many conservatives serve on the LA City Council!
Anti-police/anti-policing sentiment among far-left activists (i.e., Communists, many of whom sit on the LA City Council), and tacitly supported by Democrats and most of the media, has manufactured a “crisis of policing” in LA (and many other metro areas).
Current LAPD Police Chief, Michael Moore, is reluctantly reporting LAPD’s complement of sworn officers has now dropped below 9000 officers for the first time since the 1990s
The City’s budget calls for 9300 sworn officers (from a high of 9900 in 2010), but hiring is going poorly. Understandably, no one wants to be a cop, even with lowered hiring standards! The current recruit class has only twenty-five candidates.
As a result, there are no longer enough patrolmen and detectives to handle “petty crimes.”
In practical terms, this means that when you call the police in LA for anything short of a life-threatening, forcible felony in progress, they’re not coming!
The operator will curtly tell you to go to their web page and “file a report online.”
Thus, beleaguered LA residents, who are still paying ridiculously high, first-world taxes, in exchange, get to live in a third-world sewer.
In the 1990s, Mayor Rudy Giuliani in NYC warned that when a window in a building is broken and left unrepaired, all the rest of the windows will soon be broken. “Petty crimes,” vandalism, graffiti, burglary, public begging, squatting, illegal drug use, prostitution, filth, when not dealt with promptly and appropriately, quickly digress into out-of-control major crimes.
There is no debating this!
And this is exactly what we’re currently seeing in Portland, Seattle, Atlanta, Minneapolis, Chicago, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and yes, LA. As a result, people (especially the productive) are fleeing these liberal-manufactured sewers as quickly as possible.
Of course, Giuliani was viciously ridiculed and scorned by Democrats and their media commissars. Yet under Giuliani, NYC was the safest and cleanest big city in America, in the world, and people wanted to live there.
Today, they’re all fleeing NYC too, and for the same reasons.
“No society has ever thrived, because it had a large and growing class of parasites, living off those who produce” ~ Thomas Sowell, again…
/John
About John Farnam & Defense Training International, Inc
As a defensive weapons and tactics instructor, John Farnam will urge you, based on your beliefs, to make up your mind about what you would do when faced with an imminent lethal threat. You should, of course, also decide what preparations you should make in advance if any. Defense Training International wants to ensure that its students fully understand the physical, legal, psychological, and societal consequences of their actions or in-actions.
It is our duty to make you aware of certain unpleasant physical realities intrinsic to Planet Earth. Mr. Farnam is happy to be your counselor and advisor. Visit: www.defense-training.com
After years of light enforcement to encourage cooperation, ATF is clamping down on firearm sellers, who say they are being unfairly targeted
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives employs about 800 people to inspect licensed firearms dealers across the country.PHOTO: TIM SLOAN/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
The Biden administration is revoking licenses from hundreds of firearms dealers in a significant escalation of federal enforcement actions that has angered many in the gun industry.
It has also provoked disagreement among law-enforcement veterans. Some say it is a welcome change after years of wrist slaps, while others say it risks alienating some of the government’s most valuable sources in combating gun violence.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has revoked the licenses of 122 gun dealers in the fiscal year that began in October, up from 90 for all last fiscal year and 27 in 2021.
Previously, ATF issued warnings to many firearms dealers for legal violations, in part because they are a valuable source of tips on suspicious gun buyers. The Trump and Obama administrations never revoked more than 81 dealers’ licenses annually since at least 2013, the earliest year for which data are available.
Gun dealers have filed lawsuits and threatened to stop informing federal agents about suspicious buyers, claiming that the crackdown is a way to punish the firearms industry by an administration hostile to them.
The Biden administration, which has been pushing to more tightly regulate guns both via legislation and administrative action, said it is simply enforcing the law.
ATF Director Steve Dettelbach said guns can end up getting sold to criminals and others who shouldn’t have them if dealers don’t follow the rules. PHOTO: OLIVER CONTRERAS/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
“We’ve taken steps to hold accountable those few dealers who are engaging in these willful violations,” said ATF Director Steve Dettelbach. “They’re not going to have the privilege of being a gun dealer anymore.”
Dettelbach said guns can end up getting sold to criminals and others who shouldn’t have them if dealers don’t follow the rules.
Gun-store owners complain that the federal government is taking away their livelihoods over paperwork errors.
“We were making $1 million a year, now it’s less than $100,000,” said Anthony Navarro, who lost his license last year after receiving three earlier warnings since 2009. “This policy is designed to be a backdoor violation of the Second Amendment.”
Navarro still sells firearm accessories at his Greeley, Colo., store.
The ATF employs about 800 people to inspect more than 50,000 licensed dealers across the country. In the past, the agency had a light touch with inspections in part because it relied on dealers for information about suspicious gun buyers, according to former ATF officials.
“The gun dealers were our first line of defense against gun trafficking,” said Peter Forcelli, a retired deputy assistant director. “Why are we now beating an ally into submission?”
Other former officials said that the soft approach created an environment in which dealers weren’t worried about breaking the rules.
“The ATF, previous to this administration, had a ‘Let’s see if we can help you’ attitude and some gun dealers took advantage of that,” said Rick Vasquez, a retired ATF official.
President Biden’s tougher approach comes after a yearslong push by gun-control groups such as Brady to go after rogue gun dealers. Brady compiled about 80,000 pages of ATF inspection reports in recent years to highlight the issue.
Christian Heyne is vice president of policy and programs at Brady, which advocates for tighter gun laws. PHOTO: TOM WILLIAMS/ZUMA PRESS
“We could see regularly that recommendations for revocation were being downgraded and then these same stores would be inspected again for even at times even more than a decade,” said Christian Heyne, vice president of policy and programs at Brady.
Heyne discovered that an ATF inspector had in 2015 recommended revoking Navarro’s license for his shop in Colorado after sending him warning letters in 2009 and 2011. The 2015 inspection turned up 10 violations, including selling guns to people who said they were prohibited from owning guns on background check forms. An ATF supervisor overturned the recommendation, saying Navarro should be given a warning conference instead, the inspection reports show.
Navarro said some customers made mistakes when filling out background check forms, but weren’t prohibited from buying firearms.
SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS
How should regulation of gun dealers be enforced? Join the conversation below.
In 2020, inspectors found more violations, including failing to report multiple sales of handguns and failing to keep records of some transactions. Officials noted that they had warned Navarro to clean up his act on multiple occasions, according to agency documents.
Navarro said he discovered those issues after one of his employees quit. “It was a horrendous mess,” he said. “This guy hid forms underneath the printer.”
He said he reported the problems to the ATF as soon as he found them.
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The agency revoked his license to sell firearms last year.
An ATF spokeswoman declined to comment on specific cases.
A North Dakota gun store that recently filed a lawsuit against the ATF alleged that the new approach to inspections is being “wielded as a political weapon.” Bridge City Ordnance had sued the agency over an unrelated matter when inspectors recommended revoking its license. Lawyers for the gun store declined to comment, as did the ATF.
Leslie Gifford, an 82-year-old retiree who sold firearms out of his garage in Burlington, Kan., for the past three decades, tried to fight back when the ATF pulled his license last year for several violations including selling a gun to a man from Nebraska. Such sales are required to go through a dealer in the purchaser’s home state.
At a hearing, Gifford said he thought the sale was allowed because the man had a concealed-carry license from Nebraska, and he apologized, according to ATF documents. He attributed other violations to being too busy.
The ATF wasn’t moved by his pleas, ruling that “there is no legal justification for a licensee’s claim that circumstances, such as being busy or overwhelmed, excuses the failure.”
Gifford said he believes the government was determined to revoke his license, rather than reach a reasonable compromise.
“Mr. Biden wants to get rid of all of us little dealers,” said Gifford. “Gets me wound up, boy. It’s a political game, sure as hell.”
The grisly beating of Rodney King ultimately precipitated some of the worst rioting in American history.
Early in the morning of March 3, 1991, Rodney Glen King was driving a 1987 Hyundai Excel along the Foothill Freeway in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles. He was accompanied by his friends Freddie Helms and Bryant Allen. King and his buddies had killed the previous evening watching basketball and drinking at a friend’s house. At around 1230 in the morning, King passed Tim and Melanie Singer, a husband/wife California Highway Patrol team. The Singers initiated a pursuit, eventually reaching speeds of 117 mph. King refused to pull over.
Rodney King was a convicted criminal whose beating at the hands of overzealous police sparked widespread anarchy.
King later admitted that he knew a DUI charge would violate his parole and send him back to prison. 2.5 years earlier King had robbed a Korean grocery store while armed with an iron bar. He assaulted the store owner and made off with $200 cash. King was eventually apprehended, tried, and convicted. He served one year of a two-year sentence before being released.
Rodney King was desperate to avoid returning to jail.
King departed the freeway and led the cops on a merry chase through residential neighborhoods at high speeds. The pursuit eventually involved multiple police units from different agencies as well as a police helicopter. After some eight miles the officers finally cornered King and stopped his car.
The arresting officers didn’t realize they were being filmed when they beat King and his buddies.
King’s two companions were removed from the vehicle and arrested albeit with some violence. Freddie Helms was later treated for a laceration to his head. For his part, King purportedly giggled and waved at the orbiting helicopter. The senior LAPD officer onsite took charge and directed the LAPD contingent to swarm King for a takedown.
The four arresting LAPD officers beat the holy crap out of this guy.
Up until this point the cops were clearly in the right. However, everybody involved was energized. The arresting officers beat King mercilessly and tased him at least once. Medical personnel later documented a right ankle fracture, a crushed facial bone, and sundry contusions and lacerations. King’s Blood Alcohol Content indeed showed him to have been legally intoxicated. His tox screen was also positive for marijuana. Without the knowledge of the police, a local plumbing salesman named George Holliday shot a video of the brutal beating. This footage eventually made it into the media.
Rodney King was beaten right across the street from the movie set on the night this iconic scene was filmed .
The story behind the Holliday footage is simply fascinating. The opening biker bar scene from Terminator 2: Judgment Day was being filmed just across the street from where the cops finally stopped King’s Hyundai. Holliday actually had his video camera set up in hopes of catching a glimpse of Arnold Schwarzenegger.
During a subsequent interview he said, “Before the beating, right across the street from where we lived was a biker bar, and they were filming Terminator 2: Judgment Day there. I actually have footage on the original tape of Schwarzenegger getting on the bike and riding off.” Had they not been filming the movie, Holliday would not have had his video camera in position and ready.
Latasha Harlins’ life was a study in urban tragedy.
Thirteen days later, 15-year-old Latasha Harlins entered Empire Liquor in Los Angeles and put a $1.79 bottle of orange juice in her backpack. Soon Ja Du, a Korean-American woman who owned the establishment along with her husband, confronted her about it. Du claimed that Harlins denied having the juice. Two young witnesses disputed that claim, asserting that Harlins had the money for the juice in her hand and was planning to pay for it.
Latasha’s was an unimaginably broken home life.
Latasha Harlins was the product of some of the most sordid stuff. Her father regularly beat her mother until they eventually separated. When Latasha was nine years old her father’s new girlfriend shot and killed her mother in a dispute outside an LA nightclub. The poor girl was subsequently raised by her maternal grandmother.
Soon Ja Du gunned down Latasha Harlins in cold blood.
Harlins and Du got into a shouting and shoving match, and Du ended up on the floor. As Harlins turned to leave, Du retrieved a revolver from behind the counter and shot the girl once in the back of the head, killing her instantly. Though she was convicted of voluntary manslaughter, Du was only sentenced to five years’ probation, a ten-year suspended prison sentence, 400 hours of community service, and a $500 fine. The sentencing judge stated that the fact that Du had been robbed multiple times before affected her actions and mitigated her culpability.
The initial acquittal of these four police officers precipitated an epic conflagration.
The four police officers who beat Rodney King were subsequently tried and acquitted. Film director John Singleton was in the crowd outside the courthouse when the news was announced and stated, “By having this verdict, what these people done, they lit the fuse to a bomb.” His words were prescient.
The Riots
There resulted unfettered chaos.
The synergistic combination of Rodney King’s vicious videotaped beating, the acquittal of the officers involved, and Soon Ja Du’s mild sentence in the killing of Latasha Harlins precipitated a hurricane of violence. Riots began the day after the verdict was announced. Soon much of LA was in flames.
During the 1992 riots, much of LA burned. Note that these white people are also taking advantage of the opportunity to loot local businesses.
64 people died in the violence, and another 2,383 were injured. 3,600 fires were set and 1,100 buildings were immolated. Fire calls came into dispatchers at a rate of one per minute for a time. First responders were utterly overwhelmed.
More than 9,000 National Guard troops were deployed.
The government invoked a dusk-to-dawn curfew and mobilized the California National Guard along with Federal Law Enforcement and some active-duty military personnel. The violence continued for six days. Property damage ultimately ran between $800 million and $1 billion.
Soldiers and Marines make lousy cops.
One extraordinary episode demonstrated why military troops should never be used in Law Enforcement roles. When responding to a domestic violence incident a combined force of LAPD officers and US Marines closed on a Compton home. A violent criminal was holding his family hostage inside. Upon their approach, the suspect fired two shotgun rounds through the front door, injuring a police officer. One of the LAPD cops then shouted, “Cover me!”
In stressful circumstances training kicks in.
In keeping with their training, the Marines immediately laid down a withering base of fire to cover the cop’s maneuver. In a matter of moments, they had saturated the house with some 200 rounds. Miraculously the inhabitants were unharmed. A bit shocked, I rather suspect, but nonetheless unhurt.
Rooftop Koreans
The stage for the 1992 LA riots had been set over years.
In general, Koreans were the local shop owners, while African-Americans were their customers. There was a low-grade antipathy percolating between these two ethnic groups that boiled over after the Harlins incident. As a result, rioters targeted Korean-owned businesses for destruction. Police were so overwhelmed as to be unable to respond to calls for help. Countless established family businesses were burned to the ground.
The armed Koreans who defended their businesses during the riots were typically either revered or reviled depending upon the particular political bent of the commentators.
The businesses that survived were those that were adequately defended. In a violent, chaotic, lawless world, some Koreans armed themselves, retreated to their rooftops, and prepared to shoot looters. The resulting iconography created a modern legend among responsible armed Americans. The controversy surrounding those people, their actions, and those images roils even today.
The Guns
Guns were easier to obtain by law-abiding citizens in California back in the 1990s.
I studied all the pictures I could find to see what sorts of weapons these armed Americans were using. In 1991 California gun control laws were not quite so draconian as is the case today. For the most part, these armed Koreans wielded fairly mundane ordnance.
These guys are packing typical combat handguns of the era.
Standard-capacity combat handguns like Beretta 92’s, Glock 17’s, and sundry Smith and Wesson pistols were in evidence. There were numerous bolt-action hunting rifles along with sporting shotguns of various flavors. I spotted a couple of Mini-14 rifles and an AK. The most intriguing weapon I could find was a Daewoo Precision Industries K2.
The Daewoo K2 is an under-appreciated service rifle on this side of the pond. A reliable piston-driven design, the K2 only weighs 7.2 pounds empty.
The K2 is currently the standard service rifle of the South Korean military. Development began in 1972 and spanned a variety of prototypes in two different calibers. The definitive 5.56mm version was first fielded in 1985.
This cheerful-looking guy was rocking a Daewoo K2 during the LA riots.
The resulting weapon reflected the state of the art. A gas piston-driven design based upon the proven Kalashnikov action, the K2 fed from STANAG magazines and featured a 1-in-7.3 inch, 6-groove barrel. GI weapons included safe, semi, 3-round burst, and full auto functions. Small numbers of semiauto variants were briefly imported by Kimber, Stoeger, and B-West in the 1980s. The 1989 import ban via executive order by Bush the First capped the numbers in the country and rendered the gun an instant collector’s item. From what I have seen at least one of these superlative weapons made its way onto the rooftops of these Korean-owned businesses during the LA riots.
The Rest of the Story
Rodney King’s life met a tragic untimely end. When he died he was in a romantic relationship with one of the jurors from his civil trial.
Rodney King was ultimately awarded a $3.8 million civil judgment and became fairly wealthy as a result. He bought a house for his mother as well as another for himself with the proceeds. Tragically, King never mastered his sobriety. In 2012 he fell into his swimming pool and drowned. He had cocaine, marijuana, PCP, and alcohol in his system at the time. He was 47.
Apparently, the four cops involved just wanted to disappear.
Two of the four cops involved in the beating were eventually convicted of violating King’s civil rights and spent 30 months in federal prison. All four left Law Enforcement. None of them remained in California.
Reginald Denny’s skull was fractured in a total of 91 places. His left eye was pushed into his sinus cavity.
Reginald Denny, a passing white truck driver, was dragged from his vehicle by an angry mob and brutally beaten. One rioter struck him in the back of the head with a cinder block, severely fracturing his skull. After extensive surgery and therapy, Denny eventually regained the capacity to walk. I guess that’s something.
Ruminations
Little was safe during the riots. This entire apartment complex was gutted.
Today the uprising is referred to as “Sa-i-gu” within the LA Korean community. This translates as “April 29,” the day the violence began. During those six horrible days, multiple warning shots were fired, but no rioters were injured or killed by the rooftop Koreans. Like all parasitic scavengers, the rioters gravitated toward the areas with the easiest pickings. Businesses bristling with armed Koreans were essentially left alone.
Not all the rioters were black, and not all of the responsible citizens were Korean. This pale-faced guy scored a new sofa.
Modern commentary on the phenomenon of the rooftop Koreans is delightfully biased. Left-wing commentators state that the willingness of these shop owners to arm themselves in defense of their businesses was pure unfettered racism. They further assert that those of us who venerate this behavior are knuckle-dragging neanderthals awash in toxic masculinity and driven by insensate, race-based venom. I must respectfully disagree.
This looks like a fun girl day at the local mall.
Speaking solely for myself, of course, I don’t care one whit what color the people were who were defending their businesses or burning them down. I tend to judge others based on their civic-mindedness and propensity toward responsible behavior. Regardless of ethnicity, I categorize those who burned down their neighborhoods as the Bad Guys and those who prevented them from doing so as the Good Guys. Failure to appreciate that obvious truth seems fairly incomprehensible to me.
Regardless of the hue of their skin, these miscreants are not the heroes in this tragic tale.
There is but a thin veneer of civility that separates human animals from the lesser sort. We never seem to be more than one headline away from violence and carnage. To those who might defend the actions of the rioters, you’re all idiots. Feel free to venerate the criminals if that be your wish, but don’t act surprised when the rest of us find solace in our firearms and sense of community.
The guy busy trashing his neighborhood here is dressed like an off-duty stockbroker. Presuming rioting to be intrinsically racially segregated is itself innately racist.
I don’t minimize the egregious nature of the Rodney King and Latasha Harlin’s tragedies. However, they both had their origins in deep societal brokenness. Until we can repair the basic family structure in these derelict communities nothing will ever get better. Guns, poverty, drugs, and violence are simply symptoms. Dysfunctional families, a dearth of responsible fathers, and a lack of positive role models is the underlying disease. It remains to be seen if anyone has the moral fortitude to stop screaming about the symptoms and conjure an effective cure.
A joint bulletin issued in early August by the Department of Homeland Security and FBI warns state and local law enforcement agencies to look out for people in possession of “large amounts” of weapons and ammunition, describing the discovery of “unusual amounts” of weapons as a potential indicator of criminal or terrorist activity.
Citing the example of Norwegian mass-murderer Anders Behring Breivik, who reportedly “stockpiled approximately 12,000 pounds of precursors, weapons, and armor and hid them underground in remote, wooded locations,” the bulletin instructs law enforcement to look for “large amounts of weapons, ammunition, explosives, accelerants, or explosive precursor chemicals” that “could indicate pre-operational terrorist attack planning or criminal activity.” Weapons do not have to be “cached” in remote locations to meet the standard for suspicious activity. According to the bulletin, weapons could be stored in an “individual’s home, storage facility, or vehicle” and may include common firearms such as “rifles, shotguns, pistols” as well as “military grade weapons.” The illegal possession of large amounts of ammunition is also listed as a potential indicator of “criminal weapons possession related to terrorism.” While the bulletin never clarifies what constitutes a “large” or “unusual” quantity of weapons or ammunition, it does say that such a quantity would “arouse suspicion in a reasonable person.”
The photograph of a ‘weapons cache’ accompanying the article shows a mere five long guns (rifles and shotguns) and seven handguns, for a total of twelve firearms. I could multiply that total a couple of times before running out of the contents of my gun safe, and I don’t have a particularly large collection. Some of my friends could out-do me by an order of magnitude! Consider, for example, these photographs of private – yes, private – gun collections borrowed from this thread on AR15.com (click over there to see many pages of similar pictures – it’s a feast for the eyes of any firearm hobbyist!).
So tell me – are those collections “potential indicator[s] of criminal or terrorist activity”? If not, then my much smaller and lower-quality collection can hardly be considered to be so . . . unless you’re an unthinking, knee-jerk-reacting bureaucrat, I suppose!
As for ammunition – what precisely do they mean by “the illegal possession of large amounts of ammunition”? It’s not illegal to possess ammunition unless you’re a convicted felon – and there are no federal restrictions whatsoever on the quantity of ammunition one may have in one’s possession. (There may be local restrictions such as fire regulations, etc., but these will be area-specific.) To merely say that the quantity would “arouse suspicion in a reasonable person” is ridiculous. For a start, define ‘reasonable’. What does it mean? What’s a reasonable quantity of ammunition to me, as a rifle shooter, might seem alarmingly large to someone who doesn’t shoot at all, or appear ridiculously inadequate to someone who owns one or more machine-guns in the same caliber as my rifle. He might consume a one-year supply of ammunition for me in only a few minutes of firing! Witness last April’s Knob Creek Machine Gun Shoot:
I know a few private individuals who each currently have more than a million rounds of ammunition in their storerooms. (Two of them are friends of mine.) They happen to shoot several hundred thousand rounds per year, so they don’t consider such stocks unreasonable – but the average suburban soccer mom who doesn’t shoot at all would probably have hysterics if she knew they were stored in her neighborhood. (I don’t know why, because it’s no threat to her; but logic usually doesn’t enter into the calculation for such people.)
I try to buy ammunition in case lots – 500 or 1,000 rounds at a time. That quantity will last me for anything from a few months to a few years in the calibers I shoot. I buy it in bulk because it’s cheaper that way. I’m a retired pastor and retired law enforcement officer. Does my buying ammunition in bulk, and possessing a few thousand rounds of it, suddenly render me suspicious to the authorities? If so, I have a few words for them . . . none of them polite!
This is yet another bureaucratic overreach. Perfectly normal activities are now classified as potentially suspicious – and don’t let that word ‘potentially’ fool you. In practice, it means that some law enforcement officers and/or agencies will claim that your possession of large quantities of firearms and/or ammunition is automatically grounds for suspicion, and that you’re therefore automatically to be regarded as a potential terrorist, or criminal, or whatever. Don’t tell me that doesn’t happen. It does. I’ve seen it far too many times before – and the more bureaucratic and unthinking the officer or agency, the more likely it is to happen. Constitutional safeguards are all too often ignored in the process.
It’s long gone time we tossed out of office the politicians who approved the ‘security state’, and dismantled the ‘security bureaucracies’ that do nothing whatsoever to keep us safe – except consume our tax dollars in ever-increasing amounts, and put out such inane ‘alerts’.
Take a timer to the range and see for yourself, says Mas.
You don’t necessarily have to draw to be in a ready position. Police work being a dangerous profession, cops often have to draw their guns proactively. Some “police reform” advocates are demanding cops write a report every time their pistol clears the holster.
The NC Charlotte Observer reported in 2020, “Charlotte Mecklenburg Police will start tracking every time an officer draws a weapon and points it at someone. The additional reporting is enabled by a new sensor — sometimes called a holster monitor — which automatically turns on an officer’s body-worn camera when a firearm is removed from its holster…. CMPD Chief Johnny Jennings said all officers have now been outfitted with the new ‘signal sidearm’ sensor.
Officers will also be required to report why they drew the weapon and what they did with the weapon after it was drawn — including whether it was pointed at anyone, he said.”
That is over the top. Here are some thoughts on reducing the number of draws and avoiding the onerous process.
“Hand on a holstered gun” is one of several viable ready positions.
Drawn Gun Disadvantages
First, recognize there are many times when a two-hand hold of a drawn duty pistol gets in the way of other things an endangered cop, or, for that matter, an armed citizen, might need to be doing with their hands.
You may have to be manipulating a communications device or illumination device. In the dark, on unfamiliar floors or broken or slippery ground, there is always the possibility of a fall: The result can be a handgun knocked out of battery, its muzzle plugged with snow or mud, or a lost gun. If a situation goes rapidly to “hands-on-suspect,” getting the gun put away quickly becomes an issue. If jumped in the dark, that drawn gun may be the target of a snatch attempt.
Allen Davis comes from low ready with a Hellcat Pro 9mm. He was only about half a second slower, starting with his hand on the holstered gun.
“Hand on Gun” Technique
As a young patrolman in the ’70s, I got into the habit of mostly keeping my hand on a holstered weapon with the retaining device released. Jim Lindell taught me handgun retention in Kansas City and I knew “hand on holstered weapon” was the single strongest position for the “Good Guy” when a struggle began.
If you let go of the pistol, today’s uniform duty holsters, such as the Bill Rogers-designed Safariland, will activate the retaining device as soon as your hand leaves the holster. If ready to draw, your thumb will have already deactivated the release mechanism. You only have to worry about the effect on speed and accuracy if you need to shoot.
Speed And Accuracy
How much speed are you losing with the “hand on a holstered gun” instead of already drawn?
I took a timer to the range with my S&W 1911 .45. Starting cocked and locked at low ready from 10 feet, my time to react and fire averaged 0.64 seconds with all center hits. Starting with the hand on the holstered pistol, the average time was 0.916 seconds to react, draw and fire from a two-handed stance. Going for speed, I dropped a few points: 84% hit value as opposed to the 100% from low ready. The time difference had been only a little more than a quarter of a second — 0.276 seconds.
I went to the range with three good friends and repeated the test using Springfield Armory Hellcat Pro striker-fired guns with iron sights from an open-top Kydex. Smarter than me, they went for accuracy instead of speed, and all got 100% hit value from both low ready and starting with “hand on a holstered weapon.”
IDPA Five-Gun Master John Strayer averaged 0.686 seconds from low ready and 1.068 seconds from hand on a holstered gun, an average difference of 0.382 of one second. Retired state investigator Allen Davis averaged 0.564 from low ready and 1.024 from hand on a holstered gun, a difference of 0.46 of one second. The average overall was 0.67 from low ready and 1.178 from hand on a holstered gun — a difference of 0.508 of a second.
If you have an immediate identified threat, you want the gun up and out to start, but for less critical situations, a quarter to a half a second isn’t much of a price to pay for the advantages of “hand on the holstered pistol.”
And in Charlotte-Mecklenberg, you won’t have to write a report, which the cop-haters will use to say you’re gun-happy. Slowing down for the “speed’s fine, accuracy’s final” advice that has stood the test of time from Wyatt Earp to Bill Jordan doesn’t cost you that much.
Try it yourself: What works for you is what’s important. Keep your mind open and your hand full. Having a hand on a holstered gun is the optimum “ready” for some situations.
Minimarts can seem like easy targets for stupid criminals looking for quick cash.
It was 0500 on a Monday. The young man who clerked the local minimart was in the back corner of the store straightening up the milk jugs. His partner, a local teenaged girl, was in the restroom. The man walked into the store quietly wearing a long black raincoat. It was both too warm and too dry out for a raincoat.
This particular Quik-Stop was within line of sight to the local military base.
The minimart was located within spitting distance of the front gate of the local Army base. However, this early the PT (Physical Training) crowd was not yet cranked up. The minimart, its associated parking lot, and the surrounding neighborhood had not yet awakened for the day.
Properly maintaining a commercial business takes a lot of work. This particular morning the clerk was getting ready for a busy day.
There wasn’t a bell on the door, so the clerk arranging the dairy products did not hear the man come in. According to the surveillance video reviewed later the man feigned interest in a magazine long enough to get a feel for the store. He then quietly made his way to the distracted clerk.
A cut-down shotgun is an easily obtained criminal gun in many parts of the world.
Once within a few feet of his target, the man swept his long black Army-issue raincoat aside to expose a wicked-looking cut-down 12-gauge shotgun. The young clerk still had no idea there was anyone else in the retail portion of the store. The man then calmly rotated the gun up, oriented it on the back of the unsuspecting clerk’s head, and squeezed the trigger.
Things inevitably get frenetic in a robbery. In the heat of the moment bad things happen.
The clerk was dead before his body hit the ground. The noise of the heavy short-barreled shotgun discharged within such a confined space must have been deafening. Regardless, the man regained his wits in short order and made his way to the cash register.
The young lady locked herself in the restroom to ride out the robbery.
The teenaged girl heard the gunshot, locked the door to the restroom, and stood atop the toilet. She remained in this position throughout the whole sordid episode. The newly-minted murderer not twenty meters away never knew she was there.
Modern cash registers are fairly tough to breach.
The man, his ears undoubtedly still ringing mightily from the shotgun blast, replaced his shotgun underneath his raincoat and addressed the electronic cash register. He studied the device for a few moments before timidly trying a button or three. Alas, this machine demanded some kind of code to operate.
Our hero had clearly not thought things through.
He had just precipitously retired said code along with the unfortunate young clerk vicinity the refrigerated beer cooler. Just as the man was becoming frustrated the door opened and a local businessman walked in unawares.
The hapless businessman had no idea how lucky he was.
The business guy was obviously an early riser, and he had a habit of picking up a local newspaper at the minimart as he made his lonely way to work. This morning he did not recognize the face of the skinny guy behind the counter, but these teenagers came and went.
The local patron bought his paper just like every other day.
He grabbed his paper, smiled, and dropped a quarter on the counter before turning to leave. He never noticed the cooling corpse in the back of the store.
In a pinch a cut-down shotgun makes a passable club.
Stunned, the armed robber-turned-murderer dropped the quarter into his pocket before returning his attention back to the register. Once the business guy was clear of the parking lot he retrieved his shotgun, reversed it, and bashed the keypad with its butt. By now he was getting worried. He was running out of time.
At close range little can rival a 12-gauge shotgun for raw power.
In desperation the man hefted his shotgun, jacked the slide, and pointed it at the register. He stroked the trigger and unleashed a charge of birdshot into the machine at near contact range. Shredded keys blew across the store, and the LED display disintegrated. The cash drawer, however, remained closed. In fact, the shotgun blast had effectively peened the thing shut for the rest of time.
Once he realized he couldn’t open the register the idiot murderer just ran.
Realizing that this operation was now doomed to failure, the dangerously inept murderer replaced his shotgun underneath his coat and fled the scene. Once a decent period of time passed the young woman carefully peeked out of the restroom. These were the days before cell phones, so she grabbed the store phone and called the cops.
The Gun
The British Brown Bess flintlock musket was one of the world’s first effective shotguns.“Buck and Ball” was a common load consisting of a single musket ball and several individual lead shot.
David Fenimore Cooper was purportedly the first person to use the term “shotgun” in print. British Redcoats were known to charge their Brown Bess muskets with a combination of shot and a standard musket ball to form a “buck and ball” load. With a barrel diameter of three quarters of an inch, this smoothbore flintlock musket packed an impressive payload. This puts the Brown Bess close to a modern 10-gauge from the perspective of pure geometry.
This Confederate Infantryman is armed with a wicked side-by-side shotgun.
The shotgun as we know it really came into its own in the middle of the 19th century. Scatterguns were fairly widely used during the American Civil War.
Doc Holliday used a 10-bore fighting alongside the Earps in Tombstone, Arizona.
Doc Holliday purportedly wielded a short-barreled 10-gauge side-by-side coach gun during the famed gunfight at the OK Corral. Holliday was an Old West legend who was likely responsible for shedding a great deal of blood. However, Tom McLaury that fateful day in Tombstone was supposedly his only historically verified kill.
Shotguns like this Browning Auto-5 are common sporting arms found the world over.
Modern shotguns number in the tens of millions and are found around the globe. The fact that shotguns are commonly used hunting arms typically makes them the last to fall victim to gun bans. However, the determined miscreant can still conjure a superb concealable close-quarters weapon out of your typical sporting scattergun.
The gauge system used to describe shotguns has English origins.
The peculiar gauge system used to identify a shotgun bore is an English contrivance. The number reflects the number of pure lead balls of a certain diameter that make up a pound. Therefore a lead ball that perfectly describes a 12-gauge bore weighs one-twelfth of a pound. That’s the reason smaller numbers mean larger bores.
Shotgun shells come in all shapes and sizes.
A theoretical one gauge shotgun would fire a one-pound projectile. This is, incidentally, the same diameter as a golf ball. For whatever reason, a .410 bore is an exception to this rule and is actually 0.410 inches across.
A cut-down slide-action shotgun is an easy DIY project so long as the proper federal rules are followed.
A typical slide action shotgun sporting a pistol grip and a shortened barrel is a devastating close-quarters tool. Longer barrels will always produce superior performance, but the gaping maw of a cut-down 12-bore is invariably attention-getting.
Cutting back a shotgun barrel is easy. I used a cutoff wheel on a table saw for this one.
Transforming a typical Remington 870 sporting gun into such a tool requires a hacksaw, a rasp, about 20 minutes, and a total disregard for federal gun control law.
This cut-down 12-gauge side-by-side shotgun is a devastating close-quarters weapon. Recoil is fairly impressive no matter what you load it with.
A side-by-side shotgun also makes an effective and concealable close-quarters gun once properly pruned. I have legally shortened three shotguns by means of a BATF Form 1. Each iteration requires its own $200 transfer tax, fingerprints, and interminable wait, but the transformations can be undertaken easily with simple tools.
I turned the front sight down out of the machine screw using a drill press and filled the void between the barrels with JB Weld.
The pistol grip on my side-by-side took a little trial and error, but remounting the front sight beads required nothing more than a drill press, a hand tap, and a little patience.
The Rest of the Story
When this young soldier didn’t show up for PT he was declared missing.
The shooter was a young enlisted soldier posted to the nearby Army base. Nobody really knows where he went after the shooting but it wasn’t to PT. Once he missed the Monday morning formation he was reported absent, and the military admin wheels began turning.
The TSA and airport security as we know it represent a relatively recent thing.
This sordid episode took place in the early nineties, before 911, and airport security was unrecognizable from what it is today. The modest local airport offered regional service to the larger hubs, but you didn’t have to pass through a metal detector to board the plane. That’s hard to imagine today, but it was not unusual back then.
Pre-911 many smaller airports did not have much security at all.
The soldier boarded the airplane with his shotgun tucked inside his carry-on. He changed planes in Dallas and made it aboard the second plane still with his shotgun in tow. By the time the sun set on the day, he had killed his first man, and then he was back home with his mom.
I’m a dad. Unexpected visits from kids are always cause for celebration.
He didn’t bother telling his mother he had blown an innocent man’s head off in a botched robbery that morning. She was just pleased with an unexpected visit. Moms the world over are generally excited to see their kids and might not be inclined to ask too many questions.
This is a pretty typical criminal-used short-barreled shotgun.
There was still no connection to the shooting, but federal authorities nonetheless made a phone call to the young soldier’s home of record looking for the guy. Once they found out he was there somebody someplace put two and two together. The feds took the idiot kid into custody without a fuss. They seized his illegal shotgun as well.
Army Privates are the backbone of the military. However, in my experience they not infrequently exhibited fairly poor judgment. We used to call those spectacles RPGs or BCGs. That’s short for “Rape Prevention Glasses” or “Birth Control Glasses.”
The motive was simply money. As near as anyone could tell the shooter and the victim had never before met. Army Privates don’t get paid much, and this one had undoubtedly overextended himself. In my experience of supervising such knuckleheads, it likely involved an exorbitant car payment, a cheap girlfriend with expensive tastes, or some overpriced stereo equipment. For such as this an innocent man died.
This rocket scientist ultimately killed a man for a quarter.
I lost track of what happened to the murderous idiot soldier. He’s likely still locked up someplace. If rank stupidity was a capital offense he would be at the front of the line to the gallows. Throughout it all his take was a whopping twenty-five cents, and that for a newspaper he nominally sold.
When done properly via a BATF Form 1 a short-barreled shotgun makes an exotic yet relatively inexpensive addition to the seasoned gun collection.
